Topher McDougal

Phone: (619) 260-7927

Professor of Economic Development
Director of Research, Monitoring, and Evaluation

PhD, International Economic Development, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
MCP, International Development, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
MS, Geography, University of New Mexico
BA, Philosophy and French Literature, Swarthmore College

Topher McDougal, PhD, teaches courses on economic development, environmental peace & justice, humanitarianism, black markets, research methodologies, and evaluation.

Dr. McDougal’s research focuses on the microeconomic causes and consequences of armed violence and disasters, illicit trades (especially in small arms), and environmental peacebuilding. His first book, The Political Economy of Rural-Urban Conflict: Predation, Production, and Peripheries (Oxford, 2017), explained how trade networks shape the nature and extent of civil war violence. His recent book, Gaia Wakes: Earth’s Emergent Consciousness in an Age of Environmental Devastation (Agenda / Columbia University Press, 2025), makes the case that humanity is now challenged to create a centralized brain for the planet. His articles have appeared in peer-reviewed outlets including Economic Geography, Political Geography, International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, Defence and Peace Economics, International Social Science Journal, Economics of Peace & Security, Stability, and others. He has also contributed to popular outlets including The Conversation, the Los Angeles Times, Marketplace Morning Report, The Huffington Post, The Atlantic, and Americas Quarterly.

In addition to consulting for various organizations including the World Bank, Mercy Corps, and the International Rescue Committee, Dr. McDougal has been a research affiliate at the Centre on Conflict, Development & Peacebuilding (CCDP) at the Graduate Institute for International & Development Studies (Geneva, Switzerland), a principal of the Small Arms Data Observatory (SADO), and an invited scholar-in-residence at the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) and Tecnológico de Monterrey. He was a recipient of MIT’s Presidential Doctoral Fellowship.

Areas of Expertise

Economics of violence, environmental sustainability, iIllicit markets, humanitarianism, research design and evaluation, econometrics and quantitative methods

Scholarly Work

Selected Recent Work

McDougal, Topher L., Gaia Wakes: Earth’s Emergent Consciousness in an Age of Environmental Devastation, Newcastle: Agenda Press / Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press, 2025. Distributed in the Americas by: New York: Columbia University Press.

McDougal, T., Sean Campbell. “Taking Stocks: Updating Our Understanding of U.S.–Mexico Firearms Trafficking.” Economics of Peace and Security Journal 21(1), 2026. doi:10.15355/epsj.21.1.17

McDougal, T., Sean Campbell. “Trigger Warning: The Effect of ATF Citations on U.S.–Mexico Firearms Trafficking.” Economics of Peace and Security Journal 21(1), , 2026. doi:10.15355/epsj.21.1.32

McDougal, T., Austin Choi-Fitzpatrick. “Leviathans and Liberation: Did Whaling Contribute to the Decline of Slavery?” International Social Science Journal, 2025. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/issj.12567.

• Immanuel Wallerstein Best Article Award 2025 (Quantitative Research)